


Ragnarok

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Gen, Season 5 AU, dean/cas maybe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-29
Updated: 2013-06-29
Packaged: 2017-12-16 13:05:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/862344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone knows the stories of the Winchesters' deaths.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ragnarok

**Author's Note:**

> The writers' refusal to let Sam and Dean die gives the boys a sort of transience. It's too bad Supernatural is such a cult hit, or I could see them transforming into iconic, cultural characters, like Batman, in their inability to stay dead. Their stories could continue forever.

Everyone knows, intuitively, how Sam and Dean Winchester finally died, the same way everyone knows a true love's kiss wakes Cinderalla, or that the hunter saves little Red Riding Hood from the Big Bad Wolf, and the knight always slays the dragon at the end of the tale.

Their death is one of the Myths of this new millennium, of this post-apocalypse world. Even though the Prophet stopped writing after Michael and Lucifer battled on this earth, every child knows Sam and Dean are the sole reason mankind survived the demon onslaught after Michael lost.

            Here’s the version of the story you tell to your little sister in an attempt to get her to shut up and go to sleep:

            _Us humans and fallen Angelkind were still getting the Wards up, to hold off the demon horde racing towards the cities._ Your sister knows the tale of how Sam figured out how to ward entire cities and basically _saved the human race_ , and you don’t feel like repeating it so you plunge onward in lieu of a more complex narrative. _But people were stupid back then, and even though the earth was shifting and shaking and sobbing_ – your mom told you the version with all the personification and alliteration before she died, and it makes the tale sound grander, so you stick to it _– and some cities were just refusing the wards because they didn’t want to believe in the threat, and so they were in danger._

 _One of these cities was Sam and Dean’s hometown, Los Angeles, California_.

            You don’t actually know the name of Sam and Dean’s hometown. Your version of the Prophet’s Mythos says New York City but your Grandad tells you that’s wrong and he remembers the first edition and it was definitely Mexico City and your best friend Roger says _Lawrence, Kansas, of all places,_ but you live in Amador City, California and the angel Castiel lives in LA, and so that’s what you stick with.

            _They drove there in the Impala – with Dean’s upgrade it went faster than a train, even-_

Your sister coos. She loves the story of the Impala’s upgrades.

            - _to the outskirts of the town, to hold off the demon horde_ -

            With metaphors and hand gestures you enunciate the tale of how they faced down a rampage of demons with nothing but shotguns and their own blood for devil’s traps, how it was Sam’s quick thinking that showed them how to keep the demons out but Dean’s steadfast will and righteous fury that gave them the power to keep going.

            She gasps at all the right places, covering her mouth when you describe how Sam heard a little girl crying, how Dean wouldn’t let him go off and save her on her own.

            How they encountered their nemesis, Lucifer, and Sam faced him in one final battle. This time they won, and all three of them died in a burst of Holy Fire on the battlefield. The little girl made it to safety, and was the only one who could tell the true tale of how Dean and Sam headed off the worst of the worst of the apocalypse, and died in a blaze of glory, their greatest foe defeated.

            It’s a good story, and it makes her eyes shine, makes her beg you for more as you struggle to tuck the comforter around her neck.

            “You know the deal,” you tell her. “One story. Now shut up.”

            And that’s the way you tell the story to her every night, complete with the _Shut up and Go To Sleep_ , until you’re drafted into the military and Captain Ortega tells you and thirty-other scared-witless, fresh recruits that you’ve got it all wrong.

         

* * *

 

 

“Scouts’ fucking honor,” he says. “That kids’ story they tell you before bed? Not the way it was at all. It’s like you girls are still believin’ in Santa Claus.”

            Roger crosses his arms next to you and glowers, only he’s _Private Brown_ now, and he’s the only one brave enough to speak up to Ortega, to resent huddling around a choking fire outside the safety of the city Wards when not three months ago you were telling your little sisters bedtime stories.

            “But we are kids,” Roger says.

            “You could die tomorrow, Private Brown,” and Ortega’s glaring back for a few seconds now, before he breaks eye contact to take a swig from his beer.

None of the rest of you around the circle are old enough to drink, but you all follow his example and gulp back from the bottles you have in front of you.

Join the military, the Hunters’ Guard. Free booze, easy girls. Be trained in the art of salt circles and Latin incantations. And if you’re a new recruit, be used as canon fodder and bait to draw out the nests of demons.

“You’re all going to do,” Ortega concludes. “Your kids’ story won’t help you out now.”

“We’re not gonna die,” Private Reynolds says from across the circle. “We’ve been trained. We have guns.”

“Yeah!” Private Chang chimes in. “We’re _badass_. Like Sam and Dean!”

Ortega snorts. “Badass. Right. Badass. Sam and Dean weren’t badass, they were just lucky. Goddamn blind luck their wholes lives kept them alive long enough to become part of the end of the world. You want to know what they really were? Pussies!”

A chorus of disbelief echoes around the circle. Other privates from other units are coming in to hear Ortega’s story, and their voices add to the clatter. You keep quiet. Ortega’s one of the non-believers, one of the cynical and jaded, like those who say Red Riding Hood died at the end and Cinderella is an allegory for rape.

“The had nothing to do with the city Wards, and Lucifer didn’t die dramatically as the last city ward went up, for the love of God. It was the fallen angels who figured out how to keep the demons out.  And even then they made ‘em flawed. S’why we get so many possessions and murders ev'ry year, s’why we gotta go out and find this horde out in the middle of fuckin’ nowhere, to keep em from breakin’ down the wards ‘round our very own City of Angels and eating up our president. So you can loose those illusions about their Hollinesses right there, you can.”

The quality of Ortega’s storytelling is directly correlated to how drunk he is. Everyone has long since shut up about how he’s being a cynical ass and you’re all leaning in close for the blasphemy.

“Sam and Dean weren’t even the ones who coordinated the Hunters’ Guard.” He thumps the red insignia on his patched uniform jacket for emphasis. “That was all Bobby Singer – now _there_ was a Hunter! – and they was just along for a ride.”

“It was a bit after the last of the city Wards went up. They were living in New York City by then –“

“It’s always fuckin’ New York,” Private Brown says. “They were from _Lawrence, Kansas, goddamn it-_ “

“Shut up,” Reynolds says. “They were from LA and they went back for the war because that’s where Cas was-“ And the rest of the circle joins in with the usual innuendo about Dean and Cas.

“Shut the _fuck_ up!” Ortega growls. “I’m telling the story, so it was New York City and so  _shut the fuck up!_ It was a routine demon sweep, out in one of the suburbs. They were in the Impala – and it didn’t have any ‘upgrades’ on it, I don’t know who came up with that bullshit, it’s ridiculous – and they had a couple other hunters backin' 'em. They’d heard about some nest of demons heading for one of the little suburbs, so they were going to hold them off because the little cities sometimes fell prey to bigger hordes back in those days. So they went and tripped the nest and they were fightin’.”

“Now, there was a little girl, that much was true. She was possessed, though, and she was rippin’ out throats with the rest of them.”

“Like Lilith,” someone says eagerly, because you all know that tale.

“ _Not_ like Lilith. She waren’t that important. She didn’t even have a name, that’s how unimportant she was. Anyway, she tricked Sam – or Dean, one of them, I don’t know which and it doesn’t even matter, does it? – into thinking she was human, and he fell for it, and she killed him as soon as his back was turned.”

“ _What_!” You’re all saying. “ _No! Never!_ ” but Ortega ignores your protests and presses on.

“And the other one, Dean or Sam, whoever was left, he froze up, and he stopped fighting and _stared_ at his brother’s cooling blood, and the little girl demon killed him too. She was very proud of herself, a low level demon like that killing the famed Winchesters. They were just human, you see. Flesh stretched over bone and guts.”

“ _No! It couldn’t be!”_ you’re all still saying, and _“did she get away? Is she part of this war we’re fighting!”_

“No. She didn’t get away. She was a low level demon, after all. She died with the rest of the demons in that nest. Sam and Dean were the only two casualties. It was an ordinary mission, after all. But accidents do happen.”

“ _Not to Sam and Dean!_ ”

“Even to Sam and Dean.” He takes a swig of his beer. “They were fuckin’ pussies, like I said. Cowardly and easy to kill, like the rest of us.”

“ _You can’t just end a story like that!_ _What about Lucifer! What about fighting their arch nemesis?_ ”

“Lucifer’s still out there,” he says. “Why do you think demons keep on breakin’ through our city Wards, huh? Why do you think we’re loosing the war?”

The circle dissolves into a shouted protests and whispered fears.

“That’s not true,” Private Reynolds says. “They were brave and strong. They can’t have died like that. You can’t end a story just like that.”

“I believe Private Reynolds is right.”

You all look up as Sergeant Reyes sits himself next to Ortega and steals his beer. Ortega glares. Sergeant Reyes smiles grimly in return.

“Oh, it’s true that it wasn’t all glory and right versus wrong like it is in the tales we tell our children. And it’s true, they were only human. Like all of you.” He looks out at the circle, and since Reyes is old and wise you all prepare to believe him over Ortega.

“It was before any of the city Wards had been put up yet. Sam Winchester came up with the insignias with the help of Bobby Singer’s community of hunters, as well as some of the fallen angels. They were trying to convince those in their home town of Lawrence, Kansas-“

            “ _I knew it!_ ” Private Brown whispers next to you.

            “To put up the first of the wards. And the townspeople believed them, and joined them in the fight. But they didn’t know they had to double layer the wards, and reverse them, so a strip of demons got through.” He smiles thinly around the mouth of his bottle, waiting for the tension to build.

            “It wasn’t a little girl, either. It was a fallen comrade. A police officer. No, she was _not_ possessed, Ortega. She was the one who told Sam where the demons were coming through, and he was the one who went off to stop them, and Dean was the one who went after Sam because he couldn’t stand to let his little brother go.”

            He puts the bottle down.

            “They died heroes,” he says finally. “Yes, it wasn’t pretty. They’re flesh and blood, like you and me. They die just as easily. But they fought until their lasts breaths, and the town got its double layer of wards up.”

            Ortega snorts.

            “So they didn’t kill Lucifer,” Reyes says. “So he’s still out there. So what? He can still be killed, like the rest of those monsters. And it could be you or me that kills him. If not tomorrow, then some other time. Because even though it’s fifty years later and you’re all a lot younger, you have the same tools and the same will and the same red blood running through your veins as those Winchester boys.”

            He puts his bottle down, stands.

            “And you’re _not_ going to die tomorrow.”

           

* * *

 

           

The battle comes. Your brigade of boys is sent in as bait. You’re ambushed, trapped before you can get your speakers playing the exorcism, and the demons smash the broadcasters before you even have a chance of using them. The salt circles hold for seven minutes before the demons summon the wind to break them.

            From then on it’s bloodshed.

            There’s screaming and shouting and you drop your gun and you _run_ , you run down the street and away from the surge of demons, only one grabs you around your waist and knocks you back into an alley wall and whispers into your ear that he’s going to kill you _nice and slow_ , and then he’s screaming, he’s screaming because Private Brown has just lit his meatsuit on fire with a goddamn flamethrower-

            And Private Brown says _run!_ and you twist out of the way of the burning hands, and the demon turns on him and grips and screams fire into his throat and Private Brown cries and you scream _Roger!_ but you’re already running, running from the fear, leaving Roger to die behind you.

            You hide in one of the empty houses of this abandoned hellhole of a suburbia, in a bedroom not unlike your own at your nice safe home in Amador City, and you suck in air and listen to the screams of your comrades outside and try to think _what would Sam and Dean do_ but your teeth are chattering from fear and you need a plan, so you think - 

            this is a suburbia, there are cars nearby, cars with radios that play from speakers, and maybe, maybe, _maybe-_

            You search through the room, digging, and find one of those child’s toys, the cassette maker where you record your voice into a microphone, so you rattle a latin exorcism into the recorder and take the cassette and creep out of the house.

            The bloodshed is still going on, there are still _people, your friends are dying_ – and your hands are shaking as you head towards the nearest abandoned car you can find.

            Reyes’ body is slashed open on the ground. You focus on your task as you fiddle with the wires of the car.  _What would Sam and Dean do, what would Sam and Dean do, oh Christ what would Sam and Dean do_ -

            A demon smashes the car window and reaches for your neck. You get it in the face with holy water, and it screams and staggers back.

            The wires snap and buzz and the car _comes alive,_ _finally, oh my god_ , and the radio plays static and you reach for your cassette and

_the car doesn’t have a fucking cassette player_

            Your hands are shaking again and you try to tell yourself that it’s okay, you’ll find another car to hotwire, it’s okay, it’s okay, _WHAT WOULD DEAN AND SAM DO,_ but there’s _Reyes body on the ground right there, he’s dead, Sergeant Reyes is dead_

            And you flee the car, running, but the demon you splashed in the face with holy water is back and angry and it grabs your arm and _rips_ and you scream as your arm just

            just

            just _comes off,_ your arm just _comes off,_ and the pain hits so hard your knees bash the pavement and it’s over, it’s all over, you’re going to die.

            And then holy water splashes over the demon, and it staggers back, screaming, right into a Devil’s Trap.

            “Move!”

            It’s a boy you don’t know, don’t recognize, and his military uniform is ripped and bloody but he still hauls you up and drags you to a mini-van, throws you inside.

            “Here,” he gasps out. “I drew a trap on the hood – you can hotwire it, right?  _Right_?”

            You gasp _my arm_ and he pulls out a fucking _flamethrower_ of all things, he must have taken it from Private Brown’s corpse, and he says _I’m sorry_

            The wound is cauterized two minutes later and you’re almost passed out from pain in the driver’s seat, barely seeing anything. The boy who saved your life is gone. You don’t know if he’s dead or if he just ran off to let you die. You sit up.

            It’s fucking hard with just one hand, but you manage by gripping with your knees. The car roars to life. You sob over the steering wheel.

            The boy comes running up. “Drive!” he gasps. “Drive, drive, drive!”  Two demons race after him. He jumps into the passenger’s seat and you race out of the onslaught. 

            “My friends. Four blocks over,” he rasps. “I put a salt circle around them. Don’t know how long it’ll hold.”

            You’re still falling apart from pain, but you nod and pick up the pace. A demon smashes into the windshield and you scream like, like a fucking girl but keep driving, whirling around in front of the salt circle.

            There are four kids your age, three of them unfamiliar but one that might be Reynolds underneath all the blood. The boy who saved your life jumps out and starts to pull them into the trunk of the car. 

            A demon lunges for his back. You throw the last of your holy water and he falls back, screaming. The boy slams the trunk and leaps into the passenger’s seat again. You hit the accelerator but a demon reaches through the broken glass and grabs for you.           

            It’s the demon who killed brown. His skin is seared together, cracking and burnt, and he licks his lips and smiles.

            “I’m gonna kill you,” he says through burnt vocal chords. “I’m gonna fuckin kill you, you understand?”

            You throw the car into reverse, and the pull throw him off the car. Then you shift back into drive and crunch over the corpse.

            The last thing you see of the abandoned suburbia is the demon swirling smoke out of the body.

        

* * *

 

 

The boy who saved your life is coming apart as much as you on the drive, but he holds it together and tells you you’re a hero, like Sam and Dean.

You pass out on the steering wheel from blood loss and almost kill everyone in the car. He drives the rest of the way back to base camp.

          

 

* * *

 

 

            One of the kids you guys rescued dies from his wounds on the drive. The rest live, and recover in full.

            It wasn’t Reynolds under the blood. He’s dead. Chang’s dead. Ortega’s dead. Reye’s dead. Roger’s dead. You hate the kids that live, because they lived and everyone you cared about died.

        

* * *

 

 

Anyway, they want to give you a medal.

            

* * *

You get sent back to LA to receive your medal, and also because you’re not fit to serve in the line of duty with an arm missing. Your little sister was put into foster care after you were drafted, and you visit her at the her new home in one of the nicer parts of the City of Angels.

            You asks you about the war, and you don’t tell her. She asks for a lot of things, like when do we get to come home and why is everyone scared all the time, brother, they say the demons are getting through, is that true, and why don’t you smile anymore.

            She asks for her bedtime stories. You tell her Little Red Riding Hood and fucking Cinderella but you don’t tell her the stories of Sam and Dean anymore. Secretly, you think ugly, blasphemous thoughts.

            That Sam and Dean were humans, flesh and blood and weak, just like the rest of you.

            That they were nothing but meat suits to the angels, and they never managed to throw off their roles as vessels, and they died vessels to the archangels.

            You think the reason the Prophet never wrote anything after the apocalypse because Sam and Dean died nothing more than human and they never got the chance to be heroes.

           

* * *

 

            So, anyway, you get your medal.

You go to LA and shake hands with the president and with the angel Castiel. Your head bows a little under the weight of his eyes, and you whisper your awe of him and he only smiles with the same vaguely puzzled expression you’ve seen on every _Join the Hunters!_ campaign propaganda.

Before the ceremony on the stage, before you get your medal,  you and the boy who saved your life sit and sweat in a velvet hallway while the president makes a speech on the stage outside.

“You were brave,” the boy who saved your life is saying still. “You saved my life by driving out of there. You saved all our lives.”

            Two hundred soldiers went in there and only five new recruits made it out, you want to say, but you don’t.

            “You were brave,” he says again. “Like Sam and Dean.”

            “Sam and Dean were fucking pussies,” you say, despite yourself.

            His eyebrows jerk up. “Oh?”

            You start off telling Ortega’s version of the story, but then it morphs into your ugly, blasphemous one, the one where Sam and Dean never escaped Lucifer and Michael, there are no heroes and no myths and no hope, the story where Little Red Riding Hood was a slut who deserved to be eaten and Cinderella was raped by her father in her sleep and the dragon burns the knight alive at the end.

              “Oh,” he says. “Well, that’s how it is.”

            “Yeah.” You slump back in your chair and listen to the president speak of victory, of future.

            “You want to know what I’ve heard?” he says.

            “No,” you say. “Fuck off.”

            He smiles.

            “Yeah, so it wasn’t anything special, the way they died. They didn’t beat Lucifer. Bastard’s still out there.

But you know what I’ve heard? Everyone’s got it _wrong_. They didn’t die during the city warding, and they didn’t die in the battles right after. They were _old_. Thirty-five, forty. They weren’t anywhere near old age, all right, but they’d lived lives outside of hunting and they were mostly happy. They had their car and each a house to go back to. Sam had a girl and a kid. Dean had - whatever Dean had. Maybe he _was_ fucking Cas. Who knows? But they were alive." 

“Fucking idealist,” you say.

“Shut up,” he says, but he’s smiling.

“So they went out into the suburbs on a demon run, like you were saying, and yeah they _did_ have awesome upgrades, don’t be so cynical it _could work_ , and it wasn’t a little girl that tricked them. The little girl was being held _hostage_ , so one of them – I think it was Dean, because he was stupid like that – died getting her free.

            And yeah. Sam messed up. His brother has just died, you know. Of course he messed up.”

            He shrugs, a little helplessly.

            “Fucking idealist,” you say again.

            “So, yeah, the little girl was safe. They died brave, you know. They weren’t weak.”

            You shake your head. “I don’t believe you.”

            He reaches out and touches your left hand, the only one you have left.

            “It’s okay, you know,” he says. “To feel loss. To be afraid. It’s _terrifying._ Demons are getting through and we can’t stop them. Our friends are dying. I get it. I’m scared, too.”

            You shake your head and turn away.

            “It doesn’t mean you’re not a hero.”

            You press your lips together but twist your fingers with his until the call comes to go out on stage and get your fucking medal.

           

* * *

 

After you shake his hand, you get to meet the angel Castiel, for real, when him and a few other angels and some of your superior officers have drinks afterwards.

            “What were they like?” you ask him after you’ve worked up the courage. Your voice is raspy, and you stutter over the first word.

            He looks you up and down, raises his eyebrows, examines first your medal and then the arm of your uniform jacket pinned to the stump where the limb used to be.

            “Brave,” he says. “Fierce. Righteous.” He pours you a drink and gestures for you to sit.

            It occurs to you if anyone would know the truth it would be him, so you ask if the Winchesters were ever more than meat suits, if they ever turned into heroes.

He shakes his head.

“They died fighting,” he says.

You narrow your eyes at the fake answer, and he smiles, a little sadly.

“They died after they’d gotten all the Wards up, at least. Sam was too stubborn to go before he saw his crazy idea work out.”

You smile and sit next to him. He tells you stories of the Winchesters, of their bravado and fierceness, and you can’t help but notice that he has no stories of their lives after the apocalypse started, and it occurs to you that this particular angel has been among humans long enough to start lying as well as them.

* * *

 

You hear from somewhere that the boy who saved your life is going back into the battle as a Captain. You’re not allowed back in the war because of your arm.

There’s technology available that would give you a robotic arm, one that would function stronger than any human appendage and hold up even to the hottest fires. But the surgery is dangerous, and no one expects you to attempt it.

* * *

 

You have nightmares sometimes, of burning alive. Of the demon who killed Roger drowning you in flame. You know he’s still out there, still waiting for his revenge.

You are safe as long as you stay in the city Wards. At least until the demons manage to break free.

Your little sisters sobs in her sleep. She’s afraid of the demons in the dark, of the monsters that are real. You tell her they can’t touch her but you know that’s a lie.

You wake up frustrated and angry and you don’t even know what at. Sometimes you just scream at everyone who smiles at you, and people learn to stop calling you brave.

* * *

This wouldn’t be a fair way to end a story, though, would it? You still don’t know for sure how Sam and Dean died.

Even I don’t know, even though I’m the narrator and I should have it figured out. The truth is they died a long time ago, and everyone’s forgotten the details. 

All I know is that they died saving each other, and there was a little girl involved and they got killed for her because that’s what Sam and Dean would do. And she maybe got out and she maybe didn’t. The only real truth is that even though the wards held for this long they’re not going to hold for much longer.

* * *

That demon's probably still out there, waiting for you. 

* * *

You kiss your sister’s forehead. Tell her it’s going to be okay.  You lie and say you’re sure you’re coming back, even though you know the surgery is dangerous.

You loop the medal you got for being a hero around her neck. She promises to look after it until you return.  


End file.
